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Piano Sonata in C major, K545

Introduction

By 1788 Mozart’s glory days as an impresario and keyboard virtuoso in Vienna were over. The city’s cultural life was now badly disrupted by Austria’s debilitating war with Turkey; and Mozart could no longer count on his aristocratic patrons to support his subscription concerts. Teaching still remained one fairly reliable source of income; and it was for his pupils that he composed the ‘little sonata for beginners’, the Sonata in C major, K545, in June 1788, the period of the last three symphonies—though given Mozart’s urgent need for money, it is surprising that such an obviously marketable, ‘easy’ piece was not published until 1805, under the title ‘Sonate facile’.

K545’s immaculately bred opening movement is famous for beginning its recapitulation not in the customary tonic, C major, but in the subdominant, F major. But rather than merely copying the exposition a fourth higher (as the young Schubert often did), Mozart composed new music to make the final reappearance of C major that much more emphatic. The Andante is an innocent serenade, with a gently melancholy central episode in G minor, while the finale, in gavotte rhythm, is a delightful miniature rondo with an A minor middle section that varies and develops the main theme.

Recordings

'Listening to Joyce is strangely addictive. One cannot wait, as it were, to read the next chapter. She shares with Kreisler and Tauber the same unteac ...'The quality that comes across in these performances is the sheer joy of playing. Joyce possessed a formidable technique and an interpretative mind th ...» More